‘So, Walt,’ Mick said. ‘Got time for a quick one?’
So that’s what it was about.
‘Well, not really. I’ve got to finish the …’ He again made as if to step between them, but again Mick didn’t stand aside and so he fell back.
‘Come on. A quickie. Come onnn, Walt. No good holding out on us.’
Mick eyed David and smirked.
‘Oh, OK. OK. A quick one. Why not,’ Walter said.
‘Right. Dave, pick a method of dying. Anything you like. Anything.’
‘A what?’
‘A method of dying. Walt’s a gun with odds. Knows them all. Don’t you Walter?’
‘Well, a lot of them, yes. It’s really not that unusual.’ It wasn’t unusual. He worked in life insurance in actuaries—of course it wasn’t unusual. Well, maybe a little.
Dying was, of course, a certainty, but Walter knew the precise odds of dying by different methods. The big killers were heart disease which killed one in five of the population, cancer one in seven, and stroke one in twenty nine. But he also knew off by heart the odds of dying in other ways, right down to the more obscure methods of bee sting and lightning strike.
‘Come on,’ Mick said to David. ‘Pick.’
‘Ummm. Righto. Arrr—car accident.’
Mick smacked his hands over his eyes.
‘Too easy!’ he said.
But Walter was warming up into it now.
‘Fatal on site, or delayed?’ he asked.
‘Delayed?’ David asked.
‘He means died after—in hospital,’ Mick answered.
‘Err—fatal.’
‘Driver or passenger?’ Walter smiled now.
‘Err—driver.’
‘Based on current statistics, the lifetime odds of a driver dying on site after having been in a car accident are one in two hundred and forty four. So, for every two hundred and forty four people now living, one of them will die, whenever they die, in a car accident.’
‘In Victoria? Or Australia wide.’
‘That’s Australia-wide. You’re a bit safer in Victoria. Here only one in two hundred and seventy five people will die in a car accident.’
Dave was nodding, thinking. After a second he clicked his fingers and pointed at Walter.
‘What if you don’t drive?’ he asked, as if he’d found a loophole.
‘Then you’re unlikely to be that one person,’ Walter said dryly. He shrugged. ‘There are plenty of caveats, and being at risk of dying in a certain way isn’t the same as the odds of dying in that way. Risk varies with age and location and medical history. And of course the odds skew if there is an unexpected medical epidemic say, or a natural disaster. The odds of dying are based on generic overall number crunching, but they’re incredibly accurate all the same.’
‘Right,’ Dave said.
‘Good one, Walt.’
They were impressed, certainly, but there were still smirks across their faces. Walter knew that even though he had an impressive memory and had such detailed statistical information at his fingertips, he was, nonetheless, to them, an oddity. He made another move to leave the kitchenette, but again they remained standing in his way. He couldn’t get past them without pushing past, without crossing a line somewhere, breaking some rule of workplace etiquette—the ‘I pretend not to know you’re taking the piss and you pretend not to be taking the piss’ rule.
Don’t make me push past, he thought.
They just looked at him.
And suddenly Walter thought of the moment on the train station platform that morning when he had stood rooted to the spot, unable to enter the train, and people had met his eye, looked at him. He blushed at the memory. Sometimes he felt as if the worst thing in the world was to be looked at, sometimes he felt as if it bruised him.
*
Walter usually arrived at work at 8.00am, had his morning tea at 10.30am and his lunch at 12.30pm. That morning, having arrived at 8.45am, he found his routine out of whack—he had his morning cup of tea at 10.45am and he only noticed the time on his computer, grabbed his coat and headed out for lunch at 1.10pm.
Walter regularly bought his lunch at a sandwich shop around the corner from Equity, and he invariably got a ham, cheese, tomato sandwich and an orange juice. If the weather was bad he would eat in at one of the little tables down the back of the shop, or at the bench that lined the shop window. If the weather was good he would take his lunch and go to a nearby churchyard. It wasn’t that Walter was in any way religious—he had been brought up to be a good Catholic, as most Poles were, but had abandoned religion as soon as he moved out of home. He visited this little church, hidden away behind a spiked fence between two hi-rise buildings, because it had a small public garden that nobody seemed to know about. He enjoyed coming there to sit and eat his lunch on one of the benches under the straggly plane trees, watching the religious pass into and out of the church while the scrappy little city sparrows hopped around his feet and darted in for crumbs.
The sandwich shop was owned by a middle-aged couple and amazingly, given his track record with shop people, the second time he had gone there, so long ago now, the woman had remembered his order and had asked if he wanted the same thing. Walter was impressed that she had got it right, flattered and amazed that she had remembered him, and he nodded and agreed, even though he probably would have ordered something else. From that day on he had ‘the regular’ no matter what he actually felt like.
When it came time to pay for his lunch, Walter realised he was missing his wallet. He felt in his hip pocket, then patted the rest of his pants pockets, both front and back—nothing. He checked his coat pockets but again, nothing.
Perhaps he had left it in the office?
He apologised quickly to the woman who had made his sandwich and said they should keep it aside, he would be back shortly, that he’d left his wallet behind. The woman told him he could pay another day, but now that he knew he’d misplaced his wallet he wanted to find it as soon as possible.
It took him only five minutes to get back to his desk at Equity, but there was no sign of his wallet. He checked his briefcase—again no wallet.
Odd.
Perhaps it was in the car? He thought back to arriving that morning, late and a bit flustered. Had he taken his wallet out of his briefcase then? Perhaps to put away the car park ticket he took from the machine on entering?
It was only a quick trot a half block to the multi-level car park. When he got there he entered the lift, pressed a button for his level, then stood back and noticed a sign advising patrons that valuables should not be left visible in cars as this encouraged theft. As the lift ascended slowly to the top of the car park Walter stared at the poster. It had a tacky clipart picture, a silhouette of a hooded man with a crowbar, and a red circle with a line diagonally across the middle over the top of him. As the door dinged open Walter felt a sort of resignation wash over him.
Great, he thought. Just great.
He went to his car. The driver’s side window had been smashed. Little cubes of shattered glass were scattered all over the driver’s side seat and the floor. He peered in through the shattered window but could see no sign of his wallet. It also appeared that his CD player had been stolen. Ibiza Summer with it? Possibly.
He went to the passenger side, opened the door